tightrope

wednesday is the only weeknight when something isn't going on after work, so it's come to feel much like a sunday. in celebration of going straight home, i left work, cracked a beer, cooked myself dinner, and sat down to watch a movie: man on wire.

i was expecting only a documentary about a frenchman who walked a tightrope rigged between the world trade center towers in 1974. instead i was sucked into the story of phillippe petit's unrivaled passion and obsession with the seemingly impossible. not only was the story well told by those who lived it, but it was visually translated with some stunning black and white scenes, old photos, and playful quirks. the music was also great, making the mission's risk and its resulting tension tangible.

the story took an abrupt turn in the last, maybe, 10 minutes when the petit of the story--this creative, vibrant, incorrigible youth--crashes into the petit of present--this arrogant, self-centered, pompous man. after accomplishing a feat like that one has to change--there's no choice. and while the movie doesn't expressly mention it, it shows his once-best friend alluding to the fact that relationships were broken as a result of the feat. with a little smirk, he said it "didn't matter because, well, because we succeeded, and..." and then a few minutes of silence and he comes to absolute tears.

the story's tone so quickly turned from this amazement and euphoria to this heartbreaking nostalgia that bordered on regret. that said, the fact the film showed this downturn and ended there made it so much more complex and real.

when watching i wondered what petit felt when he learned that the two buildings, these two buildings that he thought were built for him and his tightrope, were destroyed. the answer didn't fit into the movie but it did make me wonder about the connections he have to non-living things and the "lives" that those things "live".

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today i came home and after going through the mail picked up this book i'd bought at target earlier in the week. i knew it was about some event happening in new york in the 70s but not more than that, and i only bought it because it won the national book award and was on sale. from the book's jacket, "In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people."